Actually, the Village People have no relation to this script, but felt it may capture the attention of some individuals who could share a few quirky stories that emanated from the YMCA in the 'olden' days - ie: when the Village People were around.
I posted a smart comment on Facebook last week about being on a run here in Waikiki with my running mate when he ran ahead of me, I took a sharp right-hand turn and left him to his own run. It’s a thing we used to do with our weekly Wednesday OWR (Once Were Runners) runs – if someone ran ahead of whoever was leading the run, then we’d quickly do a left or right turn and leave them out in their running oasis without their knowing the rest of us had long gone on in another direction.
Was the best, most punitive and easiest of way of letting whoever that individual was know they were a prat; no one cared how fast they could run, we were running for the social factor, not for the show-off-I’m-so-good factor.
The Facebook item gendered a response from a friend who years ago was a ‘pack leader’ of a Sunday YMCA running group. I’m going back decades now, into the 1980’s. This friend reminded me of an individual who had truly got up Pack Leader’s nose on a number of occasions by frequently running ahead of his pack, showing all and sundry what a complete wally he was.
My FB post thence began a FB Messenger tryst between myself, my friend the Pack Leader and one other renown and amazing club runner, now living in London, who I knew would enjoy our reminisces of that particular wally. Let’s call him ‘Wally’.
Between me in Waikiki, Pack Leader in Auckland, and Amazing Runner in London (female, and then a mother of 5 school-age children, worked full time and was still able to become a national running champ) we had a chuckle over dalliances other than running ahead of Pack Leader that we remember that particular Wally for. Nothing nicer than enjoying some old time giggles, with other old timers, of old characters.
Then bugger me days, the very next morning as I lay reposed in bed in Waikiki with my mobile phone catching up on New Zealand news media articles I find a headline article about our Wally. The 1980’s were decades ago yet only yesterday we were tossing notes via the ether about him almost 40 years later, enjoying the sharing, perhaps berating, but true stories about Wally and then the man is headlined in the next day's NZ Herald.
Victims of serial fraudster tell of losing their life savings in luxury car ruse
2 Jul, 2019 9:02pm
4 minutes to read
What a co-incidence.
Shan’t go into the stories we were sharing – they were all true, but don’t wish to go into any future litigation proceedings that could occur to prove them. Indeed, names in this script have been changed in case such a situation does occur.
Suffice to say that the three of us judgmental ones were feeling justified in regurgitating old done and dusted grievances the man gave us those many years ago, be they of a lesser degree than the poor sods in the NZ Herald article.
What the newspaper article, the reminisces of Wally and those times did do to me for the rest of the day was give me pop-up memories of that era and some of the really interesting and bemusing characters we had around us in our YMCA fitness circles in the early 1980’s.
It was the era of the ‘jogging’ boom. Marathons were the in thing, the activity so many wanted to be part of. With the boom of the jogging craze the management and fitness instructors from the Y set up the YMCA Marathon Club, a club that became the central and biggest running club in the country to train anyone and everyone who had the desire to run a marathon. Consequently there were many interesting characters.
Like the well-built, very well stacked male pack leader who wore the shortest of red running shorts, even for those times, and gave the women much to discuss over the bleachers in the changing rooms after and before each Sunday run.
Like the head turning good looking, charming, wealthy character, with a bronzed body to suit, who drove to the Y every Sunday in his smart, white, soft topped, 2-door sports car (not a common sight in the 80’s); he introduce himself to every new woman member of the club, whether a less than attractive individual, or a real stunner and say the same thing to them all, “Hello, my name is Rob Cook and you’re going to like me.”
And they did! They couldn’t help but do. He was a charming, smiling, wealthy smooth talker and with his blonde hair and wide blue eyes he woo’d them totally. It was always fun watching him bewitch them all by this professional, good looking, good talking lawyer.
Then there was the magnificently handsome looking couple who were stylish runners. Everyone enjoyed their running company and some of us enjoyed their social company, even going away to marathon events around the country with them. He was later goaled for life, having murdered her and cut her body into pieces and put in a green wheelie bin.
Prior to my becoming a member of the marathon club I was already a fitness centre member of the YMCA Businessmen’s’ Health Club, now known plainly as the Y Fitness Centre. Indeed, I do believe Wally was a member of that club too before becoming a marathon runner. At the time he and his wife were the cleaners of the YMCA facilities, she was a lovely lady, always felt sorry for her. But that’s another story.
Some of the characters of the Businessmen’s Health Club were real characters. I remember one of the instructors, Max Telford, became an international long distance runner and at the time had run from Auckland to Wellington in 5 days, run through Death Valley in the Grand Canyon and back in temperatures around 55 celsius, and lived – ran from Anchorage to Nova Scotia in some ridiculous time, over 8,000 kilometres and goodness knows how many other beyond the imagination long distance feats. He was an interesting, skinny, wiry man. I think he may still hold that Death Valley record to this day. I’ll Google it sometime.
We were in awe of the man whilst at the same time thinking he was a bit of a ‘nutter’. We thought that each time we saw him exit the gym sauna, having trained in there for long hours by jogging up and down the 3 high wooden steps in the heat as training for Death Valley.
There was the sweetest, most delightful character who was a well known sailor in New Zealand, D’arcy Whiting. D’arcy, very small of stature (maybe 5’4”) who would regale us with wonderful sailing stories as he was a real character in the NZ sailing world. D'arcy had served in WW2 and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and had many stories to regale over a morning cuppa after his gym work out.
My favourite D'arcy story was a non-sailing one, when his lovely wife, Mollie, had given birth to their first child. In those days men were not allow anywhere near the birth, nor anywhere near the mother outside of the rigid visiting hours at the hospitals. One night away from Mollie was too much for D’arcy so, no doubt lubed by some form of sailing liquor, decided he wanted to visit his wife and new baby. Under the cover of darkness D’arcy scaled the fences, walls and roof of what was then (I think) National Women’s Hospital in the old army barracks in Cornwall Park – now well gone – crawled as quiet as he could in his somewhat inebriated state over the roof and through a window into Mollie's room, taking with him flowers. He got to see both Mary and baby and stayed until dawn. I cannot recall whether he exited the same way he entered or not.
As a byline: the baby he went to visit is now a well known Auckland sailor and Councillor, Penny Whiting.
Sunbeds were the new thing at fitness centres in the 80’s. But they weren’t the lie-down, close the lid sunbeds of latter years. They were cubicles with 4 long vertical suntubes (similar to those normal fluorescent tubes used for lighting) in each corner, a person went in, stood upright, naked (or semi-naked) with a mask to cover the eyes while the bright sun lamps scorched the body to well cooked (we knew nothing of the cancers caused by sunbeds in those days). For the vertically challenged tanners the Y had put a small wooden box in the cubicle for those individuals to stand on. The cubicles had a swing door, saloon-type ones, so that from the outside one could see the bottom half of the legs of the sun tanner, or the wooden box with feet on them.
At the other end of the women’s changing room, directly opposite the sun cubicle a set of stairs led downstairs to a storeroom. One day, having been downstairs I was walking slowly up the stairs, turned my head in the direction of the sun cubicle to see the glorious sight a what was clearly a naked, elderly female gym member enjoying the rays of the sun lamps. I knew it was an elderly lady, I could tell, as she was sitting on the wooden box, facing the saloon door, legs wide open and body in a reposed position for the sun lamps to tan every nook and cranny of her anatomy. She clearly had not thought about the viewing potential for those coming up the wooden staircase opposite.
Never could I look at, let alone talk to, that individual without having that momentary sight come to mind.
She was actually a sweet lady who would have been mortified.
And I did go move my gym bag and gear and placed them strategically in front of the cubicle door to give her the privacy she unwittingly did not have - and to not scare the bejesus out of others.
It was about this time when the changing room had been exceptionally busy with women in all states of dress and undress wandering from showers, to mirrors, to lockers, to bags … and even to sun rooms. In those days modesty in the changing rooms was not a problem – nakedness abound, no matter what the shape the body was in. I was sitting on the bleachers and looked up to the wall above the wooden staircase and notice something that seemed odd. The YMCA was an old building – above the fitness centre was the main stadium where sports and concerts were held. I knew that somewhere on the other side of that wall was another staircase leading to toilets that serviced the stadium.
What I noted, quite high up on the wall in the changing room were small one inch holes, six of them. Curiosity had me pull a bleach to the wall, stand on it on tip toes and try to figure out whether these holes were perhaps for ventilation, or what. I could not quite reach them but could see they had been there for some time. For what purpose? I wouldn’t allow my curiosity to die and took myself upstairs to the stadium and then down the flight of stairs which were directly behind our women’s changing rooms. It happened to be stairs to the men’s toilets for stadium goers. Half way down the stairs I looked up above me and saw a dark ledge, tunnel like, that I had never noticed before. It was access to air conditioning ducts. It was too high for me to reach, let alone climb up to but was obviously an access for tradesmen should the air conditioning require work. My suspicions were justified.
Straight to the CEO’s office who initially dismissed my query as probably being alarmist. I wouldn’t let it settle. He called the building’s caretaker and the three of us went down to check it out, caretaker with ladder under arm. We held the ladder, he climbed. He returned with a blanket and some towels. Seems someone, some time ago, had made themselves a lovely little, cosy hide away, with peep holes into the ladies changing rooms - they would have had a blast, or several thousands, by the time his secret cubby hole was exposed.
It didn’t take much for the three of us to deduce who it would have been – but short of DNA-ing the blanket we had no proof. Needless to say, that individual, who was not an official employee of the Y, was not to been seen in the YMCA corridors again.
The access was boarded up and the three of us kept smut. Until now.
One person who will forever remain etched in my brain was an older lady member of the Fitness Centre who spoke with the finest of English accents, having been English born and attended, with honours, Cambridge and Oxford universities studying psychology. She was a physiological psychologist - I had never heard of one before hence it's stayed in my brain. She was in her 80's and still lectured at Auckland University.
I drove Betty to her Epsom home one afternoon when she told me she had spent some years in the 1940's (or 50's) researching whether intelligence was declining in New Zealand, as it had been proven the case in England some decades earlier. She was based at Otago University then and tested hundreds of Dunedin school children and had concluded that intelligence had in fact declined over a 1.5 generation. That fascinated me then. Imagine her research results in 2019!
Oh, the stories of individuals and people, could go on for encyclopedic volumes … stories that returned to mind due to Pack Leader, Amazing Runner and I swapping messages via the ether.
Those times were past and have passed … perhaps not a good idea to bring some stories up … after all it was in the ‘Me2’ era, and the pre-stock market crash of the 80’s (which many of the Businessmen’s Health Club were heavily embroiled in); irrespective, thought I’d share a couple that came to mind, in hope it may stir some repeatable memories from others in that era they may care to share.
Pack Leader, Amazing Runner and self did feel a little immature for regurgitating memories of our miscreant Wally but figure it’s been positive as he took us oldies back into a unique past.
Which reminds me of the Wally who entered the Rotorua Marathon one year, roared off from the start line then finished in a magnificent race time; beat all his fellow running mates hands-down, including his nemesis runner, Amazing Runner.
One can do that when spotted jumping out of a car 4 kilometres from the finish line.
Amazing Runner, in pink, with her rather quick marathoner husband Kelvin, and her sister (also a great fleet-of-foot runner) and self - photo taken this past summer when they returned to NZ for a family visit.
